


Unclean

by devovitsuasartes



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: A Make-It-Worse Fic, M/M, Not A Fix-It, One Shot, What Is This - A Crossover Episode?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-26 05:53:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20925227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovitsuasartes/pseuds/devovitsuasartes
Summary: Eddie wakes up with a mouthful of dirt.





	Unclean

Eddie wakes up with a mouthful of dirt.

It doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it should. Not just the fact that he can’t breathe, but the thought of all the bacteria and slime and shit that the dirt is made up of, gumming up Eddie’s mouth, gritty against his teeth.

He tries to lift his arms but they’re pinned down, heavy. On top of the dirt that’s covering him there are heavy objects pushing him down, down into the earth. Eddie wriggles his fingers up through the dirt, pushes at the rocks with his fingertips until some of them grind and topple. His whole body convulses, like a moth trying to break free of a cocoon, and he hears the muffled sound of more rocks tumbling away. His ears are full of dirt too.

They were in the sewers, and Richie was crying. Eddie’s arm breaks through to the surface, striking cold air, and he starts clawing the rocks away. Richie was crying and pulling at him. Eddie’s skin ruptures where he’s scratching at the rocks, dirt burrowing under his skin. Eddie had a hole in his chest and they were all gathered around, all the Losers, staring at him. Eddie went cold, and he woke up still cold.

He pulls the last of the big rocks aside and pushes his torn fingers into the dirt, pushes his body upright, breaking free into cool night air. The moon’s bright overhead, making everything look blue. Eddie blinks and sees that he’s in a strange place, high up, a clearing full of piles of stones - some big, some small, all of them toppled and broken with holes at the heart of them. The air smells sour.

Suddenly Eddie’s struck by an overwhelming pull, a voice in his head saying _go home, go home_. He kicks away the last of the rocks covering his legs and stands up. His body feels heavy and loose and when he starts to walk it’s in a shambling, drunken manner. Eddie has no idea where he is, but he knows where he needs to go. Through the forest, down the trail, down the treacherous slide of broken branches and detritus, through the sematary to… to…

To home.

Eddie has been walking for several minutes when he finally starts breathing, and some distant part of him, buried deep, actually panics a bit at that. Because it doesn’t feel like a relief, to breathe. It feels like he could stop again and it would make no difference. Breathing pulls the dirt in his mouth into his throat, but he barely feels it, barely feels the sharp stones pricking his bare feet, barely feels the breaking twigs and creaking wood as he steps down the deadfall, down to the sematary, down to the homemade crosses and carefully etched stones arranged in a spiral.

He’s not home yet. Eddie walks through the woods, loose-limbed but not clumsy, his eyes fixed on some vague spot in the distance. Finally, he breaks through the treeline and sees a house, dark inside, just the porch light on, and someone sleeping under a blanket on the bare wood.

Richie doesn’t wake up when Eddie approaches. Eddie’s feet are silent in the grass and Richie looks wrecked, exhausted. He’s still wearing the same clothes he was wearing in the sewers and they’re stained with grime and mud and sweat, his hair limp and sticking to his forehead, his hands filthy with grave dirt. He fell asleep in his glasses and they’re skewed on his face, the lenses grimy.

Eddie just stands there, for a long time. Until the sun starts to come up. He’s 40 years old and his back should hurt, his feet should hurt from just standing for so long, but they don’t. The sun starts to rise and warms his chilly skin a little and finally, with pink light bathing his dirty face, Richie starts to wake up.

At first he turns his face towards the boards, and then he freezes when he senses the shadow looming over him. He looks up at Eddie and his whole body jerks in shock.

“Eddie?” he husks, his voice gravelly and hushed. Louder then, “Eddie?”

Richie looks scared, looks like he’s about to cry. Eddie tries to unstick the mud from his throat as Richie staggers to his feet, the blanket still around his shoulders.

“Eddie? Eddie, you hear me? Eds?”

He sounds so scared. Eddie wants to hold him. He wants to hold him and squeeze him until Richie can’t breathe, until he panics and struggles, until his ribs crack and pierce his heart. 

“Ri-chee,” he manages at last, and then Richie’s hugging him, his tears hot on Eddie’s neck, his whole body shaking.

Richie pushes him around like a doll, guides him through the door of the house, talking too fast the whole time. It’s just a babble of small talk and bad jokes and questions that he doesn’t give Eddie time to answer. “Just through here, yeah, are you cold? You look cold. Just here, over here, on the couch, and  _ down _ , there you go. You want some coffee? I’ll make a pot of coffee. Jesus, one of us smells like shit, Eds, like, worse than your mom’s vagina. There’s a- a bath upstairs, if you want to- are you hungry? There’s food, I got us some food, and there’s a change of clothes because yours are… anyway, they’re my clothes so you can actually have some fucking style for once.”

Eddie stares ahead at the ugly wallpaper. Somehow he knows that they’re still in Maine, and the house they’re in has rural Maine stamped all over it: wood panelling, little gold sconces with frilly lampshades on the walls, a painting of a boat over the fireplace. There’s dust on the ornaments, like it’s been a while since anyone lived in this house. While Eddie looks around, Richie moves into his field of vision, squats down on his haunches, touches Eddie’s cheek.

“Eddie? You’re just in shock right now, man, but you’re going to feel better soon. You got hurt but you’re going to be OK.” His voice cracks with uncertainty, like he’s trying to convince himself, not Eddie. “If you could just give me one little ‘fuck you’ to let me know you’re still in there?”

With some effort, Eddie speaks again. His breath rattles in his lungs, and the words push coarsely out of his throat. “Fuck you,” he grates dully.

There’s no passion to it, no life, but Richie seems to hear what he wants to hear. He gives a laugh-sob of relief, drops forward onto his knees, leans down and rests his forehead on Eddie’s leg. His hair is matted at the back. His neck is exposed and pale and vulnerable. Eddie puts his hand on the back of Richie’s neck, and Richie takes hold of his outstretched arm, his thumb finding the lazy, sluggish pulse at Eddie’s wrist.

After a while, Richie gets up reluctantly to go and make pancakes in the adjacent kitchen. Eddie stays on the couch, straight-backed, staring at the painting of the boat. He remembers the sewer, remembers the clown, even more monstrous on its spider legs. He remembers Richie, caught in the Deadlights. He remembers, he remembers…

Eddie scratches at his chest. There’s an odd dent in it, in the center of his sternum. His dirty fingernails scrape at his shirt, find a jagged hole in it. He pulls at the fabric, ripping it.

“Hey, hey-hey-hey.” Richie is rushing back from the kitchen. “Hey, don’t do that, don’t look- I’ll get you another shirt, don’t- not that I don’t appreciate the strip show...”

“I want to see,” Eddie intones, the grave dirt still gritty between his teeth. “I want to see.”

“Eddie, please…”

There’s a bit in the middle of his ribs that’s caved in, the skin closed over it in an ugly twist of flesh. Eddie presses his fingers into it, feeling where he was impaled, wondering if he could still push his hand through.

“Eddie, _ stop. _ ” In the kitchen, the smoke alarm starts to beep, the sound distorted and looping from a tired battery. “Ah, shit the pancakes, hold on…”

The pancakes have chocolate chips in them. Richie sits Eddie down at the kitchen table and puts the burnt offering in front of him, before taking a seat opposite. Eddie looks down at the pancakes, and then picks one up.

“Eddie?” Richie’s staring at him, looking like he’s just barely keeping it together. “You don’t want to wash your hands first?”

Eddie has filth under his fingernails, which are roughened from clawing his way out of his grave. His hands are streaked with mud and sap from the woods.  _ Bacteria _ , he thinks. It’s not a particularly troubling thought. He takes a bite of the pancake.

Fifteen minutes later, Eddie is vomiting black, foul-smelling liquid onto the grass outside while Richie rubs his back and says comforting things in a voice that’s anything but calm. When his stomach is empty, Eddie leans back, and Richie takes his weight, sitting on the steps of the porch with Eddie between his legs, resting against his chest. On the nearby road, an enormous truck screams past.

“This is my great-uncle’s house,” Richie tells him, carding his fingers through Eddie’s stiff hair. “We used to come here sometimes, for Christmas, because he lived, like, an equal distance from all the family? And one time we came here, I brought my old dog, Cooper. That fucking road… Cooper had an accident, in the road. And my uncle, he… anyway. Cooper got better. He wasn’t exactly the same afterwards. But he was a good dog.” Richie’s voice cracks. “ _ Fuck _ , I loved that dog. I really loved him, Eds.”

_ Don’t call me Eds _ , Eddie thinks, but he doesn’t say it. There’s a cool prickling under his skin, an urgency, a need to act. He turns, between Richie’s legs, turns to face Richie’s sore eyes and weary face and desperate, open expression.

“Richie,” he husks. He touches Richie’s waist.

Taking the hint, Richie pulls Eddie into a tight hug. “Yeah, dude. I’m here.”

Eddie slings his heavy arms around Richie’s back. He locks his fingers together. He turns his face into Richie’s hot neck with its trembling pulse and hugs him tighter. Tighter.

Tighter.

The second journey down from the Micmac burial ground is easier. Eddie is alone, looking straight ahead, even when the rocks are dangerous and threaten to slip and slide underneath his feet. He walks through the woods, the setting sun filtering through the branches of the bony trees. He steps down the deadfall, the branches going  _ creak, creak, snap _ under his feet.

The lights are still on inside the house, but Eddie doesn’t go inside. He finds Richie’s discarded blanket still on the porch, and runs his filthy, ragged hands over it. The wood is still warm from the sun. Eddie lies down on the boards, the blanket loose in his hands. He waits.

He waits for Richie to come home.


End file.
